Five Reasons Why Your Company Should Publish a Digital Annual Report

For years, companies have printed annual reports.

Annual reports are comprehensive documents that summarize a company’s operational and financial activities during the preceding year.

However, the process of creating, publishing, and distributing annual reports in a print format can be expensive.

So, how do you reduce the costs related to print and postage costs for annual reports?

By going digital, of course!

Digital transformation is a smart strategy for companies who want to keep moving forward and innovate.

Salesforce describes digital transformation as “the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements.”

An example of digital transformation would be converting your annual reports from print to digital.

Examples of Digital Annual Reports

Here are five key benefits of digital annual reports.

1. Getting creative with the content of your report

Digital annual reports allow for higher levels of customization and creativity than printed annual reports.

You can not only key financial information and other important corporate developments but offer ways for readers to access more information via links, videos, infographics, and audio.

For example, you can feature a video by the CEO to add context.

Digital annual reports provide a platform to do better storytelling. They allow companies to move away from dry and, frankly, boring annual reports that meet regulatory requirements.

Instead, a digital annual report can be dynamic, interactive, and engaging. It performs like an inspiring and informative marketing and sales asset.

You can put the spotlight on corporate triumphs and successes and allows readers to learn more about the things that matter to them in more captivating ways.

Digital annual reports can also feature user-friendly tools to hear and learn from readers by embedding assets like surveys and feedback forms.

2. Improving the customer experience

Digital annual reports can be more user-friendly than printed reports.

With a digital annual report, viewers have a better experience because they can engage with smaller blocks of text that can be broken up by visual, interactive elements and links.

As we mentioned earlier, digital annual reports provide more options and serve the needs and interests of different target audiences.

For example, some shareholders will focus on finances and look for in-depth information about operational performance and expectations.

Other readers want information about the company's successes and challenges and background on the executive team and the strategic outlook.

A digital annual report delivers the flexibility to serve all key stakeholders.

3. Expanding your overall reach

Digital annual reports provide opportunities to share your company’s information with a larger audience.

Annual reports may be read by specific audiences, like journalists and those in the financial sector, but a digital version may attract other stakeholders and increase their interest.

A digital annual report can appear on your Website as embedded and interactive content or a link that displays a dedicated page with other assets.

It can be published on your blog as a series of posts with links to additional information.

4. Providing more convenient options

Digital annual reports can be more convenient for you and your readers. Readers can access a digital annual report anywhere, anytime.

In addition to being easier to edit on the fly, digital versions of annual reports are more flexible.

If you notice a mistake in a printed annual report, it’s impossible to correct it after the report has been published.

With a digital annual report, typos or errors can be fixed immediately and missing information can be added.

5. Saving time and money by going digital

Printing and designing an annual report can be expensive. Printed annual reports can cost from $7,500 to $20,000 to create, publish, and distribute.

Publishing a printed annual report can be pricey, even if you decide to do some of the work internally to reduce content development and design expenses.

Digital annual reports are less expensive.

There are plenty of tools available that can help you and your company build a visually appealing report, including us – Joomag!

Whether it’s a PDF of your existing digital annual report that is enhanced with interactive elements or built from scratch with one of our templates, Joomag has everything you need to make an impression on your audience.

Investors, journalists and other stakeholders can also access the previous year's digital annual reports from your website or your own mobile app.

Conclusion

A digital annual report is a user-friendly and accessible corporate asset to inform and engage key stakeholders.

We’re not suggesting that print-based annual reports will disappear any time soon but a digital report delivers new and better ways to tell your corporate story.

Ready to step into the future of annual reports? Joomag can help!

We’re a digital publishing and content performance platform that will take your annual reports (and digital content) to the next level.

Book a free discovery call